Transient fixation on a non-native language associated with anaesthesia

Abstract

We report a patient with the unusual language disturbance of transient fixation on a non-native language after otherwise uneventful general anaesthesia. The patient was unable to speak his native language for a period of 5–10 min, despite a desire to do so. He fully and spontaneously recovered from the episode. The phenomenon raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of human language, anaesthesia and consciousness. We discuss our patient in the context of some of these questions and present a review of three similar patients reported in the anaesthetic literature.